July 30, Tuesday Weekday

When Moses talks to God in the reading from Exodus, he says that God punishes “children and grandchildren to the third and fourth generation for their fathers’ wickedness.” What kind of a God punishes innocent children? I ignored the idea until I thought about how we can inherit diseases such as Huntington’s and how a mother’s drug and alcohol use can result in lifelong suffering for her child. It’s not much of a stretch to think that the effects of sin might be passed down as well.

Perhaps it’s not so much that God directly punishes us for our ancestors’ faults, but rather we must suffer the consequences of the way our relatives lived their lives. The good news, however, is Jesus’ death offers us a fresh start both for ourselves and our descendants.